Sunday March 21: Love Made Full in Giving Itself Away

[link to full email]: https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/word-of-the-week-mar21

[excerpt from email]: Practices:

• Reread these passages, perhaps aloud, listening for what speaks to you and your life now. What is the response from your heart?
• Exercise the kenotic path through your Centering Prayer practice this week, perhaps by extending your time of prayer, participating in the Word of the Week prayer groups, or simply with a new intention to be emptied.

This is a poem I have been working on for several weeks and it deeply reflects the message last Sunday (3/21).

THE PLANTING

“I tell you most definitely: that unless a seed is placed into the soil of the earth and dies, it remains alone and nothing; but when it dies, it will bear plentiful fruit for multitudes.”

– John 12:24

 

I am a seed.

I have labored long and hard

to be the most successful seed

of any seed anywhere

that has ever existed in seedmanity.

 

I have come from a pure bred lineage.

I have studied with the very learned.

I have associated with the up and coming.

I have eaten of the most nutritious of delicacies.

I have exercised and am in tip-top shape.

I have received the latest in medical science.

I have developed technological savvy.

 

Yet, I am all alone,

separated from what I do not know,

feeling empty and restless,

a sense of being lost and even uselessness.

 

I’ve seen the most experienced psychiatrists

and all they say repeatedly

is that my confusion will pass

if I just think positive thoughts about myself.

 

Yet something is rising inside of me,

crying out in severe dismay

and I continue to choose to ignore it;

but no longer am I able to do so.

 

For now my husk is failing me,

cracking, splitting, rupturing,

and I am terrified, fearful, desperate,

in holding myself together.

 

Yet the vexations have become too strenuous

to keep up what I am trying to do,

to save what I believe is my sole existence,

what I have incorporated as me from authorities.

 

 

 

(PAUSE)

 

 

 

In the distance I hear a whisper,

unrecognizable, unknown, to me, saying,

Let your whole self, your sense of being,

come to me and die in me.

 

What? Die? How senseless,

unproductive is that? Doesn’t compute at all.

This is what is now unfolding

within you, in your inner core.

 

Dying? I’ve been produced to live,

live long, well, prosperous, self-sufficient.

The unreality of that thinking and belief

is now wasting away your unique gift.

 

Gift? All I have is me. All I am

is me. I made who I am.

The delusion of that thinking and belief

is presently denying your eternity.

 

Eternity? What eternity? Once your gone,

you’re gone. Nothing is left. I is all I got.

The fallacy of that thinking and belief

is shortly going to deny you everything.

 

Everything? What’s everything? When I am

about to lose everything I have known, owned.

The unrelenting lie of that thinking and belief

is now sealing your fate of eternal loneliness.

 

So come now and die in me

and you will have eternity.

Who are you? Where have you come from?

I do not comprehend anything you are saying.

 

There is no need to comprehend,

simply let happen what is happening,

for in dying you will exceed your self,

in death you will become ever more your self.

 

For I am Life in death. I have been with you,

in you, for all eternity. I know what you can be –

eternity for eternity, of the All-in-all,

gloriously, magnificently, extravagantly.

 

 

 

(PAUSE)

 

 

 

So let go and be, releasing all that you are

as you are, and fall into me,

and be love eternal, ever self-giving life for

the yet to be ineffable beauty of Divinity.

 

This is the way of all creation-ing – the

unfolding and enfolding endlessly

of all things boundlessly – becoming

and being of the One of Oneness, eternally.

 

– James S. Mitchell, Jr

James, this is sublime.  Thank you so much for sharing this.  May I re-publish this in one of the Contemplative Outreach newsletters?  If so, please email me at pamela@coutreach.org. Deep bow to you.

Wow! What lifegiving, lifeloving gifts! Always, yet additively so through these BE-ings of blessings in poetry, and together this week!

Gratefu! Gratefu! to the the community always, for it’s existence, and to all for all, for every time we have ‘holy communion’.  Too, for every bit of preparation and facilitation, and for each person’s generosity of Spirit in each sacred share in care, for everyOne.

Fr. Thomas’, and this other extraordinary offering of poetry, The Planting by James S Mitchell, Jr., in tandem with The Moon Over a Waterfull visio-divina, felt gifts of the sublime divine for me today. In terms of the latter, The Planting –  the word”seedmanity” is, to name but just one moment of body/mind/heart eureka of resonant exploding & expanding. Combined with all of the shares this ‘village’ is the gift that keeps on giving.

What a profound experience for my husband Roman and I to get to find this path at this time, to begin learning to let go to grow to nowhere, to nothing, to hopefully BEcome more while less, freer for all, we pray. It is not loss on us too, that it is indeed a privilege to be able to  ‘pandeepen’ in this time of Pandemic; to have found CP, CO, and to get to ‘fall into the arms of God’ by BEing with ‘you’ weekly. Thank you x 2!

Thank God, literally. Thank you all!

Best blessed Lent(s) and Easter(s) always,

carmen (& roman) hurko –  new york, ny (origins in Canada:)

Dearest Carmen & Roman:  Your vibrant, affirming presence in our weekly Word of the Week prayer groups is a gift to us all, as is the overflowing gratitude that you share so freely.  We have become one family through Christ, in Christ — indeed a holy communion.

Perhaps one or both of you might feel moved to write an article about some aspect of your spiritual journey, or how it has unfolded more recently? – Pamela

[Adeline Behm]

Lots of downloading these past 10 days or so beginning with a word “defiance” unleashing a  a flow of memories, feelings, from the very negative to  liberating new awarenesses.  The image of the Moon over the Waterfall  speaking volumes into my being; the water flowing is always down, down….plunging deeply into the abyss below: ” An Abyss opens up within me. I am falling, falling, Plunging into non-existence. (Thomas Keating). “….Jesus trajectory of pure love, may just be  to show us that self-emptying is not the means to something else; the act itself is the full expression of its meaning and instantly brings into being a new creation…” (Thomas Keating)

Entering into Holy Week with deep feelings of gratitude I am ready to walk with Jesus in his descent into the abyss of new life.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Adeline Behm.

Sr. A. Behm, I’m always appreciative when you share so vulnerably during our prayer group time. It’s clear you are a courageous and willing participant in the process. – Pamela

i am humbled by your offerings above. it seems the only way to respond  to any day’s  challenges, within and without, is to fall on ny knees. God has my back,  so will bring me to my knees if necessary… over and over and over and over.

thank you James, Carmon and Roman, and Sister, and, of course, Pamela, for all your preparation and facilitating. ❤️kathleen

Kathleen, I join you, on my knees in utter stillness. – Pamela

Sunday March 21: Love Made Full in Giving Itself Away

What is the response from my heart to these practices? The statement I first heard at a centering prayer course: you don’t do centering prayer – centering prayer does you. To respond to any and all of life’s situations by the complete, free giving of myself is my daily prayer. Thank you for the refreshing reminder. <3 linda

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